A Pinch of Salt

by Eileen Ramsay

  ‘Patrick’s coming home, Charlie,’ she said and burst into tears.

  ‘Katie Inglis, that’s about the third time in our married life ye’ve started to cry and ye always choose the daftest like times. Here, help me to the side o’ the bed afore I fall on my face. My legs is that wobbly.’

  ‘Charlie, you’re no ill; don’t be ill now with our laddie coming.’ She looked at him almost in terror. It would be too cruel were he to have a relapse now.

  ‘I’m fine, Kate, just fair excited. You’ll see. I’ll be up for him coming home. Right now, let’s have some cocoa. I can hardly wait for this week’s ITMA. Tommy Handley’ll be right up on this one.’

  Tommy Handley was not the only comedian to make political statements in the ensuing weeks. Another of Charlie’s favourites, Tommy Trinder, began to campaign strongly for the Labour Party and its promise of a free National Health Service. The coalition government was dissolved on May 23rd 1945 and a caretaker government, under Kate’s hero, Winston Churchill, took over until the general election. Kate and Charlie, while politically divided, had never been closer as they waited for the real end of the war.

  They had no idea where Patrick was. He had not come straight home as Kate had innocently supposed he would on that wonderful day in early May. There was still a terrible war waging in the Far East and a worse ending was being planned for it. While Kate and Charlie and millions of others throughout Britain rocked with laughter at the antics of Colonel Chinstrap and Mona Lot of the ITMA show, or argued hotly about the relative merits of the Labour or Tory parties, a team of refugee scientists together with several American and British scientists exploded a bomb in the south-west of the United States of America. Three weeks later, duplicate bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

  Charlie was stunned. ‘I always thought an atom was a wee thing but here’s these atom bombs killing hundreds and thousands o’ wee Japs. Some o’ them was maybe old folk like us, Katie, waitin’ for their laddies to come home.’

  ‘It had to be done,’ said Kate grimly. ‘It says in the paper it was the only way to end the war without killing millions by invading. It’s over now, Charlie, for us all, Scots and Jerries and Japs and all, and that’s all that matters. Our laddie’s coming home.’

  Most of the world went mad with joy and, in her own small way, Kate went mad too. She planned a party. It would be the most wonderful party that Auchenbeath had ever seen and everyone, her whole family, would be there. The war was over. Patrick and Colm were both alive; the party would say Welcome Home and, at the same time, Goodbye to Colm and Bridie who were planning to leave for the apple farm in Canada as soon as the papers could be arranged.

  Margaret would come. How could she not? Kate wrote to her and explained that the party would be held as soon as they knew for sure on what day both men would be demobbed. It seemed to take for ever but at last they heard from Patrick. He would be arriving in Glasgow and, since it would be late at night, he would stay with Margaret and travel south the next day.

  ‘My spiritual adviser suggests that I have a few weeks’ holiday to make quite sure that I know what I am doing but I feel I can’t wait any longer. I’ll stay with you and Dad for a few days, Mam, and then, with your blessing I will go straight to the seminary. What a roundabout route I have taken but at last I am on my way.’

  ‘It’s all meant, Charlie. Bridie’s meeting Colm in Glasgow to go to the Canadian Consulate for their papers.’

  ‘You’ll miss Bridie. She was always more like yer own bairn than yer wee sister, Kate, and I suppose you’ll feel the same about Colm but, you know, I hardly knew him. He was aye sae quiet, and then he’s been gone since he joined the army, hardly home at all.’

  ‘I think I’ll miss them later,’ said Kate. ‘Right this minute I haven’t room in my mind or heart for anything but our laddie. Will the seminary be a sparse-like place with poor food; seems a shame to live for years on army rations and then eat seminary food.’

  ‘Likely he’ll never notice what he has to eat, Katie, but feed him up when he comes if it gives you pleasure.’

  He looked at the evidence of Kate’s preparations around the kitchen. ‘I never heard he was bringing the entire British air force wi’ him.’

  ‘Are folk no good, Charlie? I have Bessie’s butter and sugar ration and Mrs Peden’s. She says she cannae afford to buy it most weeks anyway, the way her man drinks. I felt a wee bit guilty taking her coupons but I gave her a bit extra, and then she’ll have some of the food home with her after the party.’ She lifted a tea towel to reveal a bowl full of large brown eggs.

  ‘Kate Inglis, you’re not keeping eggs back?’ Charlie almost gasped at the sight.

  ‘No, they’re from Deirdre and no questions asked. Two of them you’re going to have lightly boiled for your tea.’

  ‘Here’s me near forgot what a fresh egg tastes like, and us wi’ hens in the gairden. You’ll have one of them, Katie?’

  ‘No. I’m having two of my own, so there.’

  She laughed like a young girl and he sat in his chair by the fire and watched her swift, neat movements as she moved around the kitchen.

  At last the letter came bringing the good news of the actual date of Patrick’s arrival. Kate held it to her breast as if it were the beloved child himself. ‘What he must feel like, Charlie, and all the other laddies, Colm and all, finally coming home.’

  *

  Patrick felt serene and at peace. This last year of the war he had felt no fear, just a sure certainty that finally everything was going to be all right. He went about his duties, not in a daze, no. He would have been no use to himself or the other men and boys in his squadron if he had not always been aware of what could happen if he was not totally alert. Almost every spare minute he spent in prayer or quiet meditation, but not on his knees when there were others around. He lay on his back on his bunk so as not to embarrass them, or even sat in a chair in their midst but his heart and mind were completely singing with quiet joy. The war would soon be over, the war was over, and soon he would be going home, home to study for the priesthood. At last he felt almost worthy. He had committed sin, the sin of a young, weak and frightened man but he had repented and he had been forgiven. Perhaps intimate knowledge of the frailty of human nature would make him a better priest. He prayed so.

  He stayed the night in Glasgow in his sister’s grand house and enjoyed it for her.

  ‘Come home with me, Margaret,’ he pleaded as he held his niece on his knee. ‘Wouldn’t Mam and Dad love to see this poppet. You’re a wee treasure, aren’t you, Elizabeth?’ and Elizabeth, well aware of her worth in the scheme of things, solemnly agreed.

  ‘I’ve left it too late, Patrick,’ said Margaret, almost sadly. ‘I always meant to go back and to take Elizabeth, but you’ve no idea how busy we’ve been. How Mother managed with three children and no help, I’ll never understand. Mind you, she never had to do the entertaining I do. It’s non-stop, but it will be worth it in the long run. Connections, the right connections, are vital. We’re diversifying, putting profits into other things. There’s going to be a boom in house building. And then some of our business will naturally disappear or change with the war over.’ She hesitated. ‘We were in war-based activities – I’ll be honest with you, Father Pat, and call the Black Market the Black Market, but, as I told you years ago, George is bright and he saw ahead. Unfortunately to be on top of trends all the time doesn’t leave much time for other things we would like to do.’

  ‘Like keep in touch with your parents,’ said Patrick quietly and saw Margaret colour.

  ‘We’re in touch,’ argued Margaret defensively. ‘Elizabeth rings them up every Sunday regularly and George sends money to that awful mother of his, but we can’t have her up here, Patrick. We’ve got nothing against George’s people but they’re not right for here while we’re making our lives. Mother . . . and Dad are welcome, but she’s as stubborn as I am. I’m always asking them to come. I do want them to see Elizabeth; she
’s their grand-daughter for God’s sake. And I know it’s childish, but I want Mam to see what I’ve got. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? We’ve worked hard. Maybe I’ll have time to have another child. George wants a boy and Elizabeth needs to have her nose put out of joint a few times, don’t you, Mummy’s precious little lamb?’ She took the child from Patrick. ‘We can’t help spoiling her, can you blame us? She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’

  ‘She is lovely, she’s like you.’ He wanted to add, ‘and like her grandmother,’ but thought better of it.

  The next morning he bid a loving farewell to his tearful sister.

  ‘You’ll be writing to me, Patrick, even from the seminary?’

  ‘Of course I will, Margaret, and I’ll keep you in my prayers if that helps you.’

  ‘Yes, it does, and I’ll come to your ordination and maybe you’ll be the priest to marry me in the church. Wouldn’t Mother be a happy woman then, her son ordained and the wicked daughter back in the fold?’ She looked around the busy station. ‘Uncle Colm can’t have got demobbed yet; he and Auntie Bridie were going to meet us here if he got everything done. You’ll have no one to talk to on the way.’

  He smiled quietly. ‘I’ll write to you, Margaret,’ he said and kissed her for the first time ever.

  She stood and waved as the train pulled out of the station and Patrick sat down in a corner of the carriage and gave himself up to the joy of realizing that he was finally going home. He was sure that all his companions had to know what he was thinking. He was so unbearably happy; it was over, the war was over. He was going home and in four days’ time he would be where his heart and soul had always wanted him to be. The train gathered speed as if it too wanted him to get on with his life, his vocation. As it flew along the lines he watched the countryside blurring past, closer and closer and closer to home, closer and closer and closer to God.

  There was no one to meet him at the station, he was alone on the platform. He smiled away his disappointment for Kate had said in her letter that she would be there and maybe his dad too if she could stop him from getting too excited. Patrick picked up his small bag that contained everything he owned in the world and, heart still singing, walked almost at a run, up the road towards the Toll House. Smoke was coming from the chimney. They were inside. Mam would be killing the fatted calf. He threw open the door.

  Charlie was sitting in his usual chair by the fire. In his arms was a rather dirty little girl with tangled red hair. Where had he seen hair like that before? The child’s streaked face showed that she had cried herself to sleep. Of Kate there was no sign.

  Oh God, please no. You said it would be all right. I was sorry, sweet Jesus. You promised.

  Charlie looked at his son. ‘Welcome home, Father Pat. Meet Holly. She’s your daughter, Patrick, and her mammy just doesn’t want her any more.’

  21

  KATE STOOD IN the garden and gave herself up to the peace of it. Winter was coming, there were but a few days left to enjoy it. November. Soon it would be Christmas, another Christmas, and then the new year coming. No, she could not allow herself to think of other holidays; Da off the pit, or later the bakery closed for the day and the children, all three of them, cooped up against the cold, standing at the open door to shout ‘Happy New Year.’

  The hills were bare; too bare even for the sheep. It would be a hard winter; she could feel it in her bones. 1947 would come in on a blizzard.

  1947. Elizabeth was at primary school and . . . despite her vows, her rigorous self-control, she thought of the other one. Holly, the Christmas child, the child born at the season of peace and goodwill and whose birth had brought nothing but trouble. ‘Poor wee thing,’ thought her grandmother, ‘you didn’t ask to be born.’

  No, thinking was too painful.

  Damn them, she shouted silently. Damn them both . . . and honest as ever, she added . . . and me too, for my reaction didn’t help him cope.

  She looked at the garden but it was Margaret she was seeing, Margaret, Charlie’s best-beloved child who was always too busy to come down to see him.

  ‘Oh, Margaret, why can’t you come to see him? He won’t be here much longer to plague you with his working-class voice and his working-class ways.’

  ‘It’s not me keeps her away. I’ve done everything but get down on my knees to that girl and I’d do that too if I could ever see her.’

  ‘Next summer, Mother, next summer when we can take some time off. You were so right not to expand,’ said Margaret, the businesswoman, just a hint patronizingly. ‘You have no idea how time-consuming it is. I hardly ever see Elizabeth and there just isn’t time to have another child.’

  Oh, there was no limit to the amount of money Margaret spent on telephone calls – every Sunday evening – but she had not been near Auchenbeath since Liam’s funeral. And Patrick? Her knees suddenly weak, Kate sat down on the rusted garden seat, her businesswoman’s mind automatically registering that it needed attention. ‘It’s me that keeps him away.’

  A groan escaped her and she hugged herself to keep the pain inside. ‘Patrick, my bairn. Why, why, when you’d worked so hard, when you were so close, why did you do it?’

  She remembered the night they had waited for Patrick’s return from the war; the table heavy with food, the chairs ready for all the family.

  Charlie in his suit, his hair brushed into order, walking up and down, up and down, hours before the train was expected.

  ‘Kate, is it not a taxi at the door? He’s come in a taxi.’ And then the young woman and the wee lassie, another man’s bairn that the new Yankee husband couldn’t accept. Patrick’s wee lassie. She couldn’t believe she had heard the words.

  ‘Don’t think too badly of me, Mrs Inglis,’ the woman had said handing over the sleeping child. ‘Patrick and I . . . well, we were only friends . . . in the Great Books Society, and then one night . . .’ She had stumbled and cried over her memories and the husband had muttered consolingly, ‘There, there, honey.’ That was all Kate heard him say and part of her registered – Honey – Americans really do call people honey.

  ‘We had a friend; he’d joined up. They were rushing to join up, to do their bit, to end the war . . . but John . . . John was special; he was clever and good and funny and he should have lived a long, long time, and he didn’t, and the rest of us, the ones left, the ones who weren’t brave or clever or special, we were shocked – we couldn’t cope – and we comforted one another. It didn’t mean anything and then Patrick . . . He never said anything to me after it except “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He was so ashamed as if, as if he’d done something really terrible, sinned in some awful way. I wasn’t ashamed, not till later, when I knew Holly was coming. My father was a minister and there were people in the village happy to see me go wrong, as they put it. My mother helped me; I never thought she would, but she was wonderful. She wanted me to have the baby and give it away and then go back and finish my degree and I wanted to, but I couldn’t . . . I kept her. It would have been easier then; it isn’t now. Tell her that when she’s older.’ And then she’d said the stunning words that had got through Kate’s shock and had made Charlie pick up the child and hold her fiercely to his breast.

  ‘You could put her up for adoption if you don’t want her, if Patrick won’t take her.’

  ‘Does Patrick know?’ The strangled voice was Kate’s.

  ‘No. I told you; he couldn’t even look at me after that night and I had realized I was pregnant by the summer when I went home. Try to think of my side too, Mrs Inglis. I was terrified – no husband, a baby – it was horrible.’ She sobbed again and once more the tall, silent American comforted her. ‘There, there, honey.’

  ‘I never went back and I believe Patrick joined up about when Holly was born, just after Pearl Harbor. I couldn’t tell him then. Good luck, Patrick, and by the way you have a daughter. I couldn’t add that burden.’

  ‘But you could give yer babby to complete stra
ngers.’

  ‘You’re her grandfather,’ said the girl defensively. ‘And it’s for Patrick to say, isn’t it? He’s all right, isn’t he?’

  And Kate had stood and watched Charlie with the child and thought of Patrick on the train speeding home; Patrick who was going to the seminary, Patrick who wrote that he had finally come to terms with himself. How could he come to terms with this?

  She had stood as if carved from stone. Charlie spoke, the girl babbled, and Kate heard nothing but the shattering of her dreams around her. It was over, all over. The seminary would never take him now. It never occurred to her to try to bargain, to argue, to somehow get rid of that tousled little bundle in Charlie’s arms. Dear God, why? Did I aim too high? Are people like us supposed to stay in the gutter? An education I wanted for them. Everything I never had. Is that too much to ask? And the blessing of a priest in the family? Was it for me I wanted that? Was it for God? For Mam? For Patrick?

  ‘Go to bed afore you fall down, Kate.’ They were gone. Charlie had put the child in the big chair by the fire and the firelight bronzed the red curls and showed the tears drying on the grubby little face. Patrick’s child. Kate felt nothing. She looked down at the child.

  ‘Damn him,’ she said. She was frightened by her anger, her hatred. ‘I never want to see him again, Charlie. Do you understand? Tell him, him and his . . . bastard.’ The child opened startled eyes and looked at her grandmother and began again to sob, and it was her grandfather who bent to comfort. Kate turned and slowly, like an old, old woman, she dragged herself along the corridor and fell on her bed. She did not sleep. She did not hear Patrick’s voice or the door open and close behind him.

  Charlie must have undressed her for she knew she was in her nightgown and in the bed and that the doctor was there for the first time since Liam’s birth. And who was this doctor? Not dear old Dr Hyslop? This wasn’t even that new one. Oh, she didn’t care. Let him mouth his platitudes about shock and distress. But that was when the will began to assert itself again. She didn’t need a doctor. Always, always, she was the one who took care of everyone else.